Archives for August 2013

Once upon a time (well, OK, in the mid 70s) in a land far, far away (England), I went to King’s College, London as an undergraduate to study for a degree in Mathematics. Easy peasy, I thought, pure mathematics all day, every day. I could immerse myself in the realm of the pure thought, build up logical edifices, and marvel at how far we’ve come as a race. Not so fast, said someone just before I appeared for my first year, those mathematicians will leave here with a degree, but they won’t...

This particular article was prompted by the (June 2012) news that the BBC was going to not only broadcast the 2012 Summer Olympics as normal through its TV channels, but also multicast it via the Internet. (Of course, that was only to UK residents, us US residents had to make do with NBC’s execrable coverage. Unless you knew about and had UK VPN access, cough, cough.) It prompted me to think about how streaming worked over the Internet and to explain it to the layman. I started off however...